another good old-fashioned hymn I’d never heard before–A Mansion Over the Hilltop, sung by choir and congregation at Southwest Baptist Church, Oklahoma City. There’s something to be said for a whole crowd of Christians singing a hymn together!
Category: church life
Mark Rushdoony: ‘The Winning Side’
Sometimes covering the nooze is like struggling through dense jungle where the only path available is the one you hack out with your machete.
But we have to keep our eyes on the prize, Mark Rushdoony reminds us.
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/the-winning-side-1
The message of all of Scripture, Mark writes is “Jesus Christ victorious with all sin and evil put down.”
And who, in 70 A.D., would have given two cents for the new Christian Church’s chances of survival? Who would have bet against the might and power of Rome?
It’s not easy to do, since today in many ways we are like those early Christians trying to live out their faith surrounded by the Roman Empire; nevertheless, that’s God’s word to us and we have a duty to believe Him. Death and evil loses, Christ wins. That’s where the story’s going, no matter how many twists and turns it takes to get there.
‘Lawsuit Seeks to Abolish Bible-Reading in Church’ (2015)
I rerun this little satire now and then to see how close we’ve come to turning it into an evil reality. When it first came out in 2015, it was kind of off-the-wall. Now, not so much.
I know a lot of us agree that our world is getting crazier and crazier–in fact, I don’t see how anyone can deny it. And it does seem sometimes, more often than is good for our souls, that the craziness is too big, too rich, too powerful, too widely planted to be meaningfully opposed. Who’s going to stop our rogue government from turning America into a satrapy of Red China? Or a clone of Venezuela?
God will overthrow them with a flick of His finger.
It Can’t ALL Go Wrong
Reading Hollowed Out, by Jeremy Adams, I was getting the very strong impression that everything is going wrong. Everything! But then a strange thing happened to me. I found myself singing the old Car 54 theme song.
There’s a holdup in the Bronx, Brooklyn’s broken out in fights,
There’s a traffic jam in Harlem that’s backed up to Jackson Heights.
There’s a scout troop short a child, Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild–
Car 54, where are you?
And the thought came to me: Everything can’t go wrong. It sure looks like it–but what’s that, that the Bible tells us again and again, about how we should walk by faith and not by sight? I mean, is God still up there on His throne, or not? Do we have His promises, or not? Is Christ risen, and our sins forgiven, or not?
The answer is not “Not.”
I don’t understand the details of what God is doing with this fallen world of ours. Maybe He thought we need a wake-up call. Maybe even a trip to the woodshed. But the end of it all, according to God’s own enscriptured word, is salvation. Regeneration. Christ shall reign forever.
This is what we must believe. God is pleased to let us into His labors with Him, to accept us as His servants: there is no higher calling. So buckle down and work, no matter what we see, no matter what we suffer.
Because He has a new heaven and a new earth waiting for us, and eternal life with which to enjoy it.
Chalcedon Marches On
The Sanctuary Choir at First Methodist Church, Houston
You can’t always see what a ministry is doing; and sometimes what a minister of the gospel does will take years to show up on the radar.
In “Rushdoony’s Future Impact,” Mark Rushdoony predicts R.J. Rushdoony’s impact on the church and on the culture will only grow more telling–“because he addresses issues which the church has refused to address, but will be forced to at some point.”
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/r-j-rushdoonys-future-impact
Many readers of Rushdoony’s works show surprise when they learn the book was first published in the 1960s or 70s, yet seems still more applicable two decades into the 21st century (Rushdoony died in 2001). No one even had a keener insight into church and culture: you’d almost swear he had a crystal ball.
So Chalcedon’s mission includes keeping Rushdoony’s books in print–after all, some of these fields have yet to yield their fruit.
Reader Input Wanted: Can you think of any pressing issues which the church in America has ducked so far, but will some day have to be addressed?
‘Blaming God’ (2017)
This was one of the most grotesque criminal cases I ever heard of: ordained minister of the gospel, a priest, sentenced to prison for distributing child pornography. The thing that makes it so grotesque is his… defense? Is that what he called it?
Where did he get the idea that God would help him win other people’s money at online poker? But then I suppose there have been burglars who prayed the Lord to help them burgle…
Gambling and kiddie porn–it doesn’t get more depraved than this.
‘A Satire That’s Become a Reality (Aaaagh!)’ (2015)
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin
I’m re-running this post, from six years ago, because we must never lose sight of what we’re up against.
False teaching and false prophecy have become so rampant in the flatline churches, it’s almost impossible to satirize them anymore. Look what happens when you try!
I mean, come on! They even used the purposely silly name I gave the satire! “The New New Testament.” Cobbled together out of ancient twaddle rejected by the Church centuries ago.
False teaching, false prophecy, are very much with us.
Hang on to your Bible.
‘To Be Raptured, Or Not To Be Raptured’ (2013)
Whether the Rapture is real or not, one thing I’m sure of–crouching under the pews waiting for it benefits no one but the Enemy.
So many of my friends and family, and fellow servants in Christ’s household, believe in the Rapture. And many do not. Some great theologians accept it. Other great theologians reject it.
I can’t find any support for this doctrine in the Bible. It ought to be there, in both Testaments. But fighting over this with other Christians is hardly a good use of our time on earth. God has richly endowed us with real enemies who want to wipe out the Church everywhere.
“Occupy until I come” (Luke 19:13), as taught by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, remains the best procedure.
‘The Second Tower of Babel’ (2017)
If you ever thought you could study archaeology without being nagged about a lot of Far Left twaddle, you thought wrong. Nowadays archaeology is all about Saving The Planet and reining in White Supremacy. (Barf bag, please.)
In fact, you can’t study anything today without having PC palaver rammed down your throat. And it’s all gibberish, they make it up as they go along. (Done any othering lately? How ’bout that intersectionality? Blah! Blah!)
The original Tower of Babel judgment, in which God confounded human language, was a sovereign act of grace and mercy that protected us from world government.
Today humanists confound the language in an effort to set up world government–with themselves in charge of it, of course.
May Jesus Christ deliver us.
By Request, ‘I Am Thine, O Lord’
Requested by Erlene, another Fanny Crosby hymn–I Am Thine, O Lord (Draw Me Nearer), sung by the congregation at Southwest Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. It might be a little hard to make out all the lyrics, but there’s something to be said for a church packed chock-full of Christians singing a hymn.
Anybody out there want to go for a third Fanny Crosby? The hymn shop is open.